Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Part 5
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: Dawn breaks on the morning after many a revelation.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: Two houses, both alike in dignity, in fair Valinor, where we lay our scene. Yes, well, the whole thing’s gotten completely out of hand!! Cannon characters worked so well together, that they begot multiple OMCs, who then begged for their own proper tale. Think of it as Romeo and Juliet for Male Elves, with star-crossed lovers, a fair amount of quarrelling within the families, but, do not fear, there will be no life-taking of any kind. It does, however, help to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

***************

Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Five

Moments before the dawn, Echoriath drifted into wakefulness.

Not one speck of him felt else but feathery light; he wafted through the tight-wrapped satin sheets like a thistle on the breeze. His syrupy spine was poured over the bed as long-boiled sap over a blanket of winter snow, his rose-baked skin sticky and slick. He had become one with the unctuous heat that enveloped him, cocooned as he was in reams of gossamer cloth, lissome limbs, and long filaments of cornsilk hair. A swan-like slope of neck, a hairsbreadth beyond the reach of his lust-plumped lips, lured him further into woozy consciousness, though he dared not yet break from this sultry husk and shed the last scales of his carapace. Not while his bed-teacher slumbered still, in the hearthstone sleep of the sated.

When the last whips of pleasure from his first taking had subsided, Echoriath had languished, giddy and overtender, in his new lover’s embrace. After some moments of silent understanding, the sudden mirth often sparked by afterglow had struck them; aided, no doubt, by two fresh goblets of miruvor and the need to be cleansed of their drippings. Tathren had set about this task with his usual wit and wryness, his salacious, oft-vulgar humor eliciting raucous peals of laughter from where he’d once wrought impassioned moans; for they had been cousins long before their intimacy and would be long after. Indeed, Echoriath was so heartened to discover that their familiarity and affection had been amplified, not altered, by their loving, that he had boldly attacked the seasoned adventurer, knowing all too well what sweeps and hollows on his sculpted frame might be tickled to distraction. The playful assault had eventually turned so distracting, his access to his cousin’s body so freely given, that Echoriath could not resist some sensual explorations of his own, with mouth, tongue, and scarlet, though timid, touch.

Thus his lesson had arduously proceeded, his instructor only too-ready to be employed and deployed for experience’s sake.

From within the hotbed folds of said instructor’s arms, Echoriath recalled - unable to keep his cheeks from burning a becoming shade of crimson - how pliant, how peerlessly craven Tathren had been. How he’d borne both the blissful agony and the often brute twists of Echoriath’s teasing experimentations in erotic massage. How his ravenous mouth had hovered above the tender elf’s over-frothing erection, indicating the more yielding areas of swollen flesh and explicating the vagaries of technique: how firmly to grasp, how to ghostly taunt, how to lave, grate, and swallow wholly down. How he’d teetered on the breech of the darkling elf’s second penetration for a tortuous eternity, detailing the minutiae of angle, circumference, and depth of thrust. Echoriath’s subsequent ravagement had been double-fold, of element and of intellect.

Tathren alone could have taken him so. Not once through the heady night had he wondered if another ever could accomplish a similar feat; this morn, in the womb of his arms, the unheralduestuestion had its visceral answer.

Even if it be his soul’s ruin, he would love no other in Valinor entire, not for the rest of his days.

This wisdom both thrilled and terrified him. There were, after all, other sides of the coin to consider, to efface, such as their fathers’ wrath, their family’s scorn, and, most potently, Tathren’s own perspective. An adventurer’s heart was boundless as the ocwidewide, wilded by enclosure yet constant as the tide. Echoriath had stood tall amidst the battering rush of feeling that coursed from his cousin’s raging spirit, but, through time and the tension of domesticity, the strength within him might slowly erode, along with their cousinly bond. All this philosophy was, at heart, a logician’s pure speculation, unfettered by reality or circumstance, as Tathren had yet to evidence any emotion other than fraternal regard or loin-wrought desire.

Though, upon waking, his hazy blue eyes were rather tenderly lit.

“By what conjurer’s art do you smell so sweet, after the fervor of our revels?” Tathren purred against his face. Echoriath chuckled capriciously, but was too dizzy with languor to reply. “Methinks I should have staved off sleep awhile and balmed my own braised body with the replenishing salve. Are you sore, my dear one?”

“Nay,” he murmured, as their gazes met. “Nor aught but most blissfully, if momentarily, sated. Your benevolence has been… has been such a gift to me, tathrelasse. I… I am no poet, but if I were, I would compose a crown of sonnets heralding your gallant graces, the wealth of your-… compassion.”

“Such bleak thoughts ever-reign you, nin ind,” Tathren sighed, out of humor. “Twas not for pity’s sake that I had mind to seduce you, nor were my intentions so… so becoming of an honorable elf.” He cinched them even closer together for his confession, his lips pressed hot against the darkling elf’s cheek. “For weeks, your sterling countenance has haunted my dreams, mocking me with its comeliness, rousing me to agonizing ends of want, my desire and my… my envy. Of any other who might dare bask in the aura of your luminous skin awhile, who would take the innocence I sought to claim for my own. I coveted you, my beauteous one, and now that we have so feverishly coupled, I fear I am unmanned by… by my need for you. Echo, will you come again, tonight? Could we not, perchance…?”

“As long as you will have me,” Echoriath whispered, both startled at his candor and relieved by his request. “I will come.”

Tathren kissed him with such alacrity at this spare statement, Echoriath feared they might never seek to rise.

“I would beware such scatterbrained vows,” the golden elf teased, when they could breathe again. “You may be held to them, and we are, after all, immortal.”

“Unlike some adventurers of note,” Echoriath retormiscmischievously. “I am reputed for my constancy.”

“That you are, pen-neth,” Tathren shot back, then howled as his couple-raw thigh was mercilessly pinched. The bed-teacher soon found himself pinned to his own mattress, his bold-eyed charge smirking above him.

“I seem to recall no little wonderment, night last,” he taunted imperiously. “When the jewels of my engendering were revealed to your wanton eyes.” The cunning elf deftly slipped between his legs and pressed his indeed wealthy treasures saucily to him.

“Tyrant!!” he exclaimed, suddenly flush. Though his wicked eyes nearly propelled Echoriath to instant completion, the young elf kept steadily on, hammering another thrust to his hips. “Though I admit Elbereth has, upon reflection, gifted you with incredible girth. Unmatched in breadth and length, some might say, among elfkind.”

At this too-admiring compliment, Echoriath blushed furiously, but dared not conceal his amber eyes from his daunting tutor.

“You are too kind, gwa-…” he paused, his ever-ready mind caught by some curiosity. “What… what must I now call you, Tathren?” His lusty intentions forgotten awhile, he slunk further down his cousin’s lank form, crossed his arms over his chest and rested his chin at their joining, to mark him more attentively.

The golden elf’s face softened, his affection too plain. “What do you wish to call me, Echo?”

“I know not,” he admitted bashfully. “In company, I would call you gwador, as ever, but here between us, it is too… you are…”

“You are lirimaer,” Tathren beamed up at him. “My lovely one. And I think it not too coarse, nor too rife with meaning, to call you meleth within the privacy of our bedchamber, as I have one or two of my past lovers, if you would accept and employ the appellation with the respect it is given, that of heart’s brother and object of my most intemperate desires.”

“Very well,” Echoriath smiled indulgently, as he had not ever smiled to another. “*Meleth*.”

“This, however, raises a more pregnant issue,” Tathren continued hushly. “One I have myself long contemplated, long reasoned over, but to no avail. What think you, Echo, of keeping our relations… for us alone? Indeed, quite… secret?” Though Echoriath was not taken aback by his proposal, he did not immediately reply, but pondered the matter some in the light of the totality of his recent experiences.

“Though I am but newly versed ich rch relations, as you say,” he ventured. “I see little worth in worrying our betters by… we are, after all, but lovers awhile.”

“Cousins and lovers both,” he exhaled, as if the utterance alone were shameful. “Our fathers, methinks, would not take kindly to such news as ours. I know not what the future may beset, but for the present moment…”

“We are agreed, tathrelasse,” Echoriath finished for him, prickled by his glint to the future. Be it from headiness or other abasement of logic, said eternity, after the requisite slow-burn courtship, proved rife with potential. He plucked a kiss from his lover’s mouth to seal the pact, then rested their foreheads together. “I must away. I would bathe in the river before breaking fast and my fathers will not take my absence lightly.”

“Then I will meet you in the oak thicket after noontime, gwador,” Tathren proclaimed, swooping in to caress him once more. “And you, lirimaer, late this midsummer eve, after revels.”

“We both hungrily await your company, meleth,” Echoriath rumbled, with undisguised heat, as he threw off their covers and took his first, wobbly step of this hallowed morn.

***********************************

Cuthalion was befuddled, and no little bemused, by the gangly and distracted spirit that possessed his haggard brother this morn.

After stealing away from the frankly commonplace charms of the striking but vapid elf he rebounded with evening last, he hastened to their bre breaking, where they were to plan out this first day’s construction on their apartments. The premier task of the coming afternoon, the cutting of builder’s wood from a thicket of mighty oaks, needed be performed with the utmost delicacy and care, in order to preserve the sanctity of their forest home. The sacrifice of the ill and aged trees, years before their impending, but inevitable, decay in order to ensure the hardiness of the wood, must be given due reverence by those who claimed to be their guardians; Echoriath and Cuthalion chief among them, as they would inhabit the finished talans. Thus, before a saw was wielded or an axe uncloaked, a morning of choral litanies would be sung, soothing hands laid on the becalmed trunks, and silence observed for an hour of deference, as they encircled their familiar trees. While Cuthalion had participated in these rites many times before, most of the exploring party were new to them, so their plans, their vital instructions, need be precise and exacting.

The rather startling sight that greeted his entrance to the banquet hall gave him some concern, but greater amusement. Garments plastered to his still-damp frame and black hair sodden, trickling down his back to a pool beneath his chair, his timorous twin shoved oatcakes into his mouth as if he’d been starved by heathens for a half-century. He stopped only for slurping gulps of oarberry juice, the scarlet liquid dripping down to his neck, in his ardor, and staining the cerulean blue collar of his raiment. By the circle of empty trays around him, his honey-smeared fingers and his crumb-scattered plate, he had been feasting for no little time, with such ravenousness as Cuthalion had never before witnessed in him. Echoriath was ever one to peck at his food, impassive and elegant as a finicky heron; he would not dare break off even the driest frond of lembas without proper utensil. The velocity and disarray of this precipitous repast was without precedent for his younger brother. As their bewildered housekeeper crossed by with a steaming bowl of berry porridge, her anxious eyes begged him for some respite, some explanation as to their dearest Echoriath’s wolfish appetite.

In truth, he could think of none, so he plunked himself down at table and raised an inquiring brow.

Juice-stained lips smiled at him with such unabashed warmth that Cuthalion nearly shoved back his chair and hoisted his sweet twin into an hug, unseemly as the gesture might be at such an early hour. As he himself tucked readily in to his too-welcome porridge, he marveled at how furiously and relentlessly Echoriath gorged himself. Before long, he’d consumed two entire bowls, another tray of honeycakes, four slices of lembas with plum jelly, three cups of juice, and a half a pot of tea, to aid in his all-too-vital digestion. Before they departed, he merrily requested a skin of calf’s milk and some nut-spinach wraps from cook, not to mention the peaches and cobapples he packed; his only words, though ever gracious, to his brother were in regards to what stores he might also want of. When Cuthalion replied he would share his own, Echoriath bashfully doubled his order, though one would be hard-pressed to tell who was the more surprised, the darkling elf at his brother’s temperance or the silver elf at his twin’s seemingly bottomless stomach.

This timid one’s bedevilment continued throughout the morn. While the rituals were explained, and then re-interpreted by Cuthalion into common-speak, with efficiency, precision, and the proper application of emphasis, Echoriath’s mind was, for the lion’s share of their hour-long mediation, wholly away from the proceedings, as evidenced by his gauzy, absent eyes. Indeed, these unknown and unforgiving preoccupations plagued him through the noontime meal, where their Ada-Fin needed trouble to raise his voice to rouse his attention. This, in itself, was no strange occurrence, as Echoriath was often caught devising when in familiar company, but their father repeated himself three times before his son properly comprehended his rather, after all, frivolous question.

As his foggy-headed twin blundered through the early afternoon among the tempered oaks, Cuthalion began to fear he had taken sick, as Echoriath himself became increasingly frustrated with his own lack of focus. Though the explorers managed the most brutal task of sawing down the trees, Echoriath was charged with guiding their aim. While no other trees were hit, the builder himself, over and again, barely escaped being crushed by a tumbling titan, such that Cuthalion had to quietly suggest he retire himself to trunk-scoring. Improper shaving of bark caused a splinter to lodge just shy of his eye; when he turned his inattention to axing off the slighter branches, he almost severed his own fingers. He tripped over logs, snarled his sleeves in the more spindly boughs, and fell to contemplation of the leaves for great, blank-faced expanses of time, until some companion snickered and he broke from his enchantment. The explorers found their weirded master too charming, encouraged by some evidence of imperfections and intrigued by the impetus for his fugue states.

Cuthalion, however, was rather overly concerned. His brother had never behaved this way before, never missed an axe-stroke, never dodged a falling tree, never splintered wood, and never, despite he and Tathren’s most devious mocking, daydreamed through meditations. If not for his – again, rare and unnatural – self-effacing and downright pleasant attitude towards his mishaps, he would have long fetched their grandsire. To add to his intrigue, and no little to his disquiet, Echoriath himself recognized his ungainliness. When he jovially suggested better occupation at his forge, Cuthalion almost objected, if only to prevent the blaze that might subsequent erupt or the forever-scarring burns that might result from the flighty manipulation of molten glass. Echo’s manner, however, indicated that he might not truly take up this or any such task, so Cuthalion reluctantly excused him, with a promise to take council with him before the evening meal.

At that, Echoriath remarked that he would stop by the kitchens on his way, and did anyone require some refreshment?

Cuthalion knew not whether to chuckle or chide him.

**********************************

No more poignant argument for the enlargement ofir fir family could be made to the esteemed Elf-knight of Telperion than the hallowed domestic scene before him.

The blistering noontime sun was blighted by the oval skylight above their meal table, absorbing the brunt of the rays, imbuing the air itself with high lights and low lights of shimmer. He was the lone darkling elf assembled at the elliptical table, each one of the Silvan kin rendered beatific by the sun’s gossamer radiance: Mithbrethil the rich amber of topaz, Tathren of mellower honey, Legolas of flaxen mane, and Laurelith the white-gold of pure ore. None observing them could mistake the common thread of their heritage, Laurelith’s poise and humility bequeathed to her courtly sons, later passed on to the youngest among them. When they jested, the mischievous glint in his mercurial son’s eyes could be traced back through his father’s, to his spritely grandmother. Indeed, Laurelith wasted no time on gray tales of Mandos, but listened attentively to any tale her three ‘young ellon’ had to recount, of their lives, loves, and adventures.

These last Tathren doled out with some hesitation, preferring to defer to his father and his uncle. Elrohir implicitly knew that his brave one was learning more about his father’s early life in Mirkwood from this hush afternoon than he had in a hundred and forty-two years, as clearly evidenced by the firm set of his jaw. Indeed, as Legolas and Mithbrethil wove for their mother a quilt of their childhood and adolescent experiences, his ocean blue eyes became increasingly overcast with the knowledge that none of these tales had been shared with him afore. Yet he remained rapt with attention, still as Elrohir had never seen him, though one of his bowsman’s acuity must by now have marked how the Mirkwood brothers avoided the description of many a dark decade, many a conflict between sire and sirelings.

That the telling of those disagreements was only too-well known to Tathren impressed severely upon the Elf-knight.

Legolas, for his part, was transformed by his Naneth’s ethereal presence. One of her sleek, elegant arms ever-tucked between his own, he basked in her relentless regard, spinning tale upon tale if only to see her peerless smile again. Elrohir would have had ample cause to be envious, if he were not so sympathetic; he himself had reunited with his Naneth upon their advent in Valinor. While he was long acquainted with his dear Nana, Legolas had had no such luxury, no such supportive maternal shadings to his wildwood upbringing. Thus Elrohir, as patient, model husband, had in hours past borne a night-stretch of relentless chatter from his overexcited mate, who plotted their next months with a desperate, childlike eagerness and painted the future in the hues of a glorious sunset. Not that their future exploits had been so bleak beforehand.

None among the company dared raise the ghost of one who nevertheless lingered unbidden among them, his majestic and oppressive presence looming on the outskirts of their fervent conversation. There were moments when, Elrohir noted with some concern, Legolas skated so fleetly past the mention of his sire that he feared he might, in his ardor, unwittingly tumble into the hazardous banks that buffered his tale and his Naneth would see how greatly he stumbled. Tathren, keen as ever, chose to wait aloft from this trouble out of deference to his father’s obvious cheer; yet his hawkish eyes marked each hesitation, each absence, as if a black pebble in a secret ballot. When Elrohir wove a comforting arm around his son’s shoulders, he veritably sprung up in his seat, though the Elf-knight alone fell victim to the flash of his stormy eyes.

Collecting himself, Tathren sunk back against his father; the violet-blue circles of fatigue around his watery eyes only then apparent. As he pulled back the curtain of golden hair and rubbed the back of his weary son’s neck, he loosed his fitted collar enough to spy the garland of crimson culls hidden beneath. With the others occupied by some sprawling tale of his husband’s, he tickled the circumference of one of these scars, bow-shaped and red as only another’s mouth could smear him. He smirked approvingly at his son, who faintly blushed and would not meet his eyes.

Tathren’s mood, however, visibly lightened at this inward remembrance of his scarlet night.

Elrohir resumed his ministrations, and murmured: “Could it be you have made your choice regarding a certain elf’s too-besetting innocence?”

“He is innocent no longer,” Tathren admitted in a low-voice, to shush him.

Elrohir smiled softly to himself. Though unobtrusively reprimanded by his son, Tathren nevertheless betrayed a warmth and pride that gave away his self-satisfaction; by his tender countenance, the love-act had affected him just as eloquently as his young charge.

“Is your path resolved, then?” Elrohir inquired beneath his breath, too curious to help himself. “Will you court him?”

Tathren opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of the biting retort that tipped his tongue.

Instead, he whispered: “I would deserve him, ere I woo his too-ample heart.”

Just as Elrohir thought to quest further into the gnarled brush of this enigmatic response, Legolas, his face ashen, extricated himself from his mother’s hold and rose haltingly to his feet. He slunk soundlessly into towards the glass doors of the terrace, his eyes sightless, his cheeks blanched of their rosy mi Tat Tathren clenched beneath his fingers; they both knew instantly what had been proposed. The inevitable.

The ghost in the room had taken stealthy, strident form.

“Gwanur, all is not now as once before,” Mithbrethil attempted to reassure him, also rising. “Nana is returned to us… She is eager to reclaim her lost love.” The mere thought of his Naneth loving such a tyrant made Legolas swallow back a retch of disgust. “Surely past woes, even such trenchant hurt as you have known, can be…” Legolas spun on his heel, his eyes a fiery frost.

“*What*, Thilion?!” he seethed. “Forg-“ He bit back the last of his words with one look at his mother’s face. “Forgive me, Nana, I must… I must take some air…”

Legolas broke open the terrace doors and escaped into their garden, stomping a swift path towards the shelter of their favorite willow. Mithbrethil snorted with frustration, both at his brother’s behavior and at the necessary explanations he was left to give his forlorn mother. Laurelith herself had grown terribly pale. Elrohir wondered, not for the first time that day, how perceptively she might have already predicted her sons’ suffering in her prolonged absence.

Before he could bleat a proper excuse to follow his furious mate, Tathren leapt into action and blazed out into the day. With a soft nod, Mithbrethil assured him all would be well-kindled there, while Elrohir left to smother the flaming ires of his firebrand family. After a deep, centering breath, Elrohir slipped into the garden, careful to shut the terrace doors behind him. As he trod the path into the willow thicket with measured steps, he muttered a prayer to kindly Elbereth, for he too-well knew this particular conversation would require every grace of diplomacy the Lady had gifted him.

He came upon them in the clearing between the willows and the open forest, Legolas tight as a fist, Tathren’s stabbing eyes locked on his stubborn father. Neither yet spoke, but Elrohir dreaded silence as much as speech itself. With a few hours vital repose for both of his blonde treasures, their debate might have been fraught, but their regard ever-fond. Sleepless and frayed, their warrior natures reared their implacable heads, waiting, like preying falcons, for the moment to strike.

Elrohir knew the only suitable gambit was to stand between them; he did so.

“Ada,” Tathren snarled, but dared not move closer. His darkling parent may be a diplomat, but he was no weakling lay-elf. “I would have my answer.”

“Though I have not heard the question spoke,” Elrohir tempered him. “I yet wonder at its timeliness, ioneth.”

“Ada!!” Tathren shouted anew, and Elrohir knew this last was not for him.

“*Saes*, Tathren,” Elrohir soothed, taking slow, cautious steps towards him. “He is tender. You know well Ada-Las has not seen his Naneth since his most delicate infancy. One cannot mend five hundred years of lashes in one balmy afternoon.”

“Ever has he denied me right to know him,” Tathren mercilessly accused. “Since the night of my begetting, he has conspired to shelter me… from what?! Whose tales were those spun with the deftness of a master necromancer around our noontime table? Tales of glee and gameliness, of brothers-to-the-last skipping through the glades of Greenwood? Who’s son are you, Ada, to ensorcel your Nana so?! If my grandsire is so heartless, then let his withering stare ground my bones to cinder, but allow me the grace of my own consideration. The choice was mine to refuse!!”

“Ioneth, you are out of turn,” Elrohir warned him. “No compliance will come from use of such a bold tongue.”

“Would I had other weapons,” Tathren snarked, his eyes a sheet of ice. “But my arsenal is spare. Tales of wickedness and deceit, of arrogance and power wielded but to shame. There is no Greenwood in my memory-chest, merely Mirkwood dank and dreary. Crazed as its crafty King, to whom I can bear no allegiance, though he be my grandsire in name.”

“He would not name you grandchild,” came a solemn voice behind. Legolas turned, but would not broach the distance. “Nor of elfkind, my brave one. In his conception of rank and file, you are but a stone in his boot.”

“How can you know this?!” Tathren demanded. “You have not set him in your sights since afore the War!!”

As if gliding over the grass, Legolas stood beside his mate and met his angry son’s eyes with a cold countenance. Elrohir so wanted to curl both his husband ais sis son into a crushing, absolving embrace, but knew the hot-point of tension between them need be played out. With a look at Tathren’s adamant face, Elrohir feared the impending revelation as nothing else in all his millennia of life, for they had kept a most bruising matter from their dearest child as vigilantly as wolves from a babe’s basket.

“You are mistaken, ioneth,” Legolas intoned evenly, each word brittle and chafing. “Even one as vile and colluding as you now count me thought that, after the War, my Adar might emerge anew from the lunatic King that ruled him. In your infancy, too enamored by your quicksilver sweetness, I returned to the Greenwood and sought him out. Mithbrethil stole me into our family keep, ostensibly to fetch some forgotten things, and again I stood to face my father. I begged him to see you, to know the child of his devising. No matter how loudly, how desperately I shrieked, railed, or bellowed through the throne room, he would not acknowledge me. I did not exist for him, I had not since my departure, years before. I told him of your beauty, of your agility even at such a tender age. Of your mischievous nature and how I adored you. What a gift he had wrought by his deceptions. I told him of your birth, my son, and the first moment I held you close. The King of Mirkwood acted no better than an infant, as if his youngest and once dearest son was… dead. Invisible. He nattered on endlessly to my brother, as if a wily spirit thundered about the place. I stood inches from his face and he ignored me. When he could not hold to decorum before his ministers, he fled, and I was precipitously banished from the realm of my birth.” Legolas ended his telling with a shudder, still unable to properly digest his Adar’s unfathomable behavior. “This is the sire you would bow to, my brave one? That deviant, cunning, ungrateful and barbarous heathen King? Who poisoned my wine and led me to an infidel’s bed, his own son?!”

“Now we have the truth of it,” Tathren egged him on.

“*Legolas*,” Elrohir cautioned his husband against this course of reasoning, but the archer batted his benevolent hand away.

“Who tainted the two most beloved to me with his wretched devilry?!” Legolas growled, rage igniting within. “As an afterthought to revenge, no less!! Who persecuted those who fought daily for the sanctity of a madman’s rule. Who chose your mother as he might chose a mare for his enemy’s stud, who sought a ruinous existence for a child not yet born to the world!! Who berated and scorned and bled me dry of love for him through his tyranny, and hatred, and the most base of self-indulgences!! Who sought-“ Legolas caught this last by biting his tongue through, never would this last blasphemy escape his lips.

To his shock, Elrohir voiced it plain. “Who sought to murder his own grandchild, in his mother’s womb.”

Tathren blanched, staggered back apace.

“I left the Mirkwood to save you, nin pen-ind,” Legolas found the words again. “Not my people nor my birthplace. Three attempts were made on Neyanna’s life within a month of your begetting. Three more at Imladris, one even in the Golden Wood.”

“But I am here,” Tathren whispered hoarsely, shaken to the core. “I am here…”

“Valar be praised,” Legolas gave thanks again, as he had a million times throughout the years, that Elrohir was of such swift blade.

“*Ada*,” he implored Elrohir, with eyes so wounded and bereft the elf-knight could barely stay himself back. “It cannot be.”

“The assassin’s sable hair strung your first bow,” Elrohir confessed to him. “And every one since, to show your triumph. We sought only to protect you, ioneth.”

“And deceive,” he spat back.

“Nay, never that,” Elrohir insisted, reaching out a conciliatory hand. “Even in earliest years, you refused to hear his name blackened, by any elven tongue. You were so tenacious in regard he so undeserved, we nearly thought you spelled. To this very moment, your ire is misplaced.”

“I would win his esteem,” Tathren bleated, unwilling to yield. “I am worthy.”

“Too worthy,” Legolas seconded, his eyes resilient, but dewy nonetheless. “He is but a shriveled orc beside your glory, my brave one.”

“He fashioned my very soul by his deceptions!!” Tathren suddenly bellowed, gulping back the sobs that threatened. “You fear I am his creature… I see the terror in your eyes.”

When Elrohir caught him up in his arms, he wrenched himself away. He stumbled unsteadily back, before taking flight, heedless of his father’s anguished beckoning behind.

****************************8

As he crept hours later through the musty stone entrance, an unfamiliar scent, like burnt molasses, welcomed him into the cave dwelling.

Concealed by clumps of teeming moss and cascades of ivy beneath the rock-shelf to the east of their family compound, the glass forge was once the homely abode of their dwarf-friend Gimli, but, upon his recent passing, the small mine and ample hearth had been gifted to his apprentice, Echoriath. Only the telltale sign of smoke billowing from the tar-treated trunk atop the shelf told of the hollow core within, from which would emerge, often on cozy winter evenings, a darkling elf bearing a carefully buffered wheelbarrow full of the day’s creations: plates, goblets, window panes, candle holders, carafes, and shapely vases, each molded in some significant form for the destined recipient. For his one-and-thirtieth, Tathren himself had received a set of wind-chimes in pewter, porous coral, and blue glass for his new talan, the tenor of the notes they struck together reminiscent of a sea chantey. The chimes still hung by his bedroom window; he and Echo had woke to their sad song that very morn.

It was the kindly heart of this elf he ran to, after hours of devastation and despair.

The faint binds of fatigue that constricted his movement at the noontime meal were now, after hours of charging through the forest like a dragonslayer on the hunt, as leaden as shackles and chains around his sluggish frame. Though he was hardly clear-headed that morning, the whirligig reasoning of his run had exhausted him to resigned temperance; the thought of Echo’s consolation dragged him forward shuffle by groggy shuffle. When at last he slipped into the forge proper, the fugue-like heat of the invitingly furnished room kept him from announcing himself. Instead, he curled into a plump-cushioned basket chair and watched the master craftsman at work, with no little fascination.

Though he had, on occasion, interrupted his cousin in the garden, in his greenhouse, or at his easel, he had only ever admired the result of this most dwarf-like of his skills. He had never witnessed any ply their hand at this elusive, mysterious art, not even Gimli. By stealing into the caves after such a tumultuous afternoon, Tathren had sought his cousin’s ear, but a little time’s observation taught him his lover also lingered near. His focus was easily lured away from his brimstone-laden musings towards the agile fashioning of eight slender-necked goblets, each blossoming upwards and fanning out like a small bouquet of willow leaves. Their color, a gray-green hew, was perfectly captured, their elegance implicit. How one of Tathren’s coarse archer’s hands could balance such a fragile cup with the requisite gentility of manner was unfathomable, though he didn’t for a moment doubt that they were meant for him. His unruly manner and impatient, ever-twitching fingers would certainly smash such delicate glasses before long, what indeed did Echoriath have in mind?

The answer flickered in his furthest recesses, but he was too distempered yet to give himself such recognition, not after his fractious display in the clearing.

Instead, he focused on the young master’s method. Wielding his blow-rod like a combat-training staff, he swung the long metal bar around and stuck its end deep in the cauldron, which hung in the blazing hearth. The flames were so ferocious that they’d singed the plum of his cheeks violet-red, yet he wore no mask or scarf. Echoriath dredged up an amorphous mass of molten glass, enough to coat a generous quarter of the rod, then spun the drippings free. Alternating between a cutter and a blunt claw, he balanced the far end of the bar on his anvil, shaving off any further excess into a mighty rock trouhat hat lined the front of the crucible hearth. The blob of glass had yet to take any shape, indeed was entirely too thick, even by Tathren’s untrained eye, until Echoriath deftly heaved up the rod and put the far, cold end to his lips.

To his cousin’s utter shock, he sucked out a breath-full of ashen fumes, then blew, with nimble, practiced pressure, an oblong bubble through the glutinous glass-melt. After several more well-measured breaths and a few deft rolls to keep the coating even, he swiftly doffed a mitt wove with mithril twine, then, employing a twin-blade, milled the leaf-structure in as the glass became rigid. The timing of this vital maneuver was clocked with a hairsbreadth precision, as were the tiny details scored into the rapidly cooling surface with a pin. The resulting carafe, to compliment the goblets, he cut from the rod seconds later, simultaneously tossing the still smiting end into a bucket of solvent and sliding his creation over the anvil’s end. With a flat-headed hammer, he refined his edges, solidified the sides, and smoothed the cylinder into flawless shape. After some consideration, he added a groove for pouring and a handle from the still malleable scraps in the trough.

When he raised the exquisite carafe before the fire to check for shadow-missed imperfections, Tathren was considerably awed, both by his talent and by his care. No elf or task accomplished by his darkling cousin received any less of his meticulous efforts, be it the earth he was seeding or an individual he attended. The thoroughness and sensitivity of his scrupulous nature, Tathren realized, was what had instinctively drawn him into the cave, into the warmth, the shelter of Echoriath’s berth. As he lazed back into the cushions of the basket chair, he noted how the hearth glow flattered his cousin’s baked skin, how his sweaty brow glistened in the firelight and how his amber eyes rippled as a golden su ove over the surface of a lake.

After Echoriath shed his apron and turned away from the flames, long aware of his not-so-stealthy intrusion, his ombrous, haloed form padded slowly towards him, only the glint of his smile perceptible in the dim light of the cave. With the sleekness of a mountain cat, he eased onto his new lover’s lap, stroking their faces together and yearning to be petted. Tathren sighed fondly, as the darkling elf slipped further into arms, his sprightly, teasing tongue flicking at his ear lobe. Echo snickered, rather pleased with himself, then grew bold, ghosting his lips above his cousin’s and baiting him for a kiss. Seeking the solace only this - his tender one - could provide, Tathren slowly mated their mouths, the fume-hot depths of this moist cavity terrifically rousing. Caught up in the incredible sensation, suddenly so dearly needful of his rosy-hearted cousin’s affections, he delved, again and again, into their truly searing kiss.

When Echo broke gently away, he groaned, but was soon appeased by the tracing of those bawdy lips down the slope of his neck, down his chest, pausing only to lift his shirt before singing a pert nipple. He did not remember teaching his dear one to worry and lave so effectively; though, at present, his weary mind could recall little other than sable, sensual, and painfully stiff, which he most emphatically was. As that peach of a tongue steamed a stirring path to his taut navel, Tathren struggled against the too-cloying fabric of his riding breeches. He realized then that they would couple there, before the roaring forge, on the edge of twilight, and, after the agony of his noontime heartache, he feverishly desired the bliss of their bodies’ union.

Limber fingers found him, made quick business of his breech laces, though the resulting tremor at his baring reminded him of the relative inexperience of his tormentor. Tathren lifted his drooping lids and peered down at his lap, splayed as in dreamscapes with sheathes of ebony hair, just as Echo’s pink-swollen tongue essayed a first, timid taste of him. /How have I allowed this to progress so quickly?/ he dazedly wondered, moments before a ready grip clamped around the base of his engorgement and that curious tongue lapped the underside.

Pleasure shot through him, fiendish, enrapturing, as a smirking mouth suckled his bulbous head. When skilled hands began to work him as knowingly as the metal rod, Tathren’s crystal eyes saw the most scarlet of reds. He could naught but moan, wanton and thrillingly unwound, as Echo’s hearth-fired tongue explored him; testing – like any discoverer worth his salt – a variety of licks, culls, and mind-melding swipes, until the skin of his erection tightened to a raw purple and he took him into the forge of his mouth. The scorching heat was as nothing Tathren had ever felt before. It took ever ounce of his honor not to buck into the smoldering deep of his throat, as the breach, though gorgeously sensuous, was yet shallow. Echoriath, caught in the moment’s thrall, sucked ravenously, without shame but with a daring ardor. As the pressure built in his loins, as the ecstasy of this purely loving act coursed through him, Tathren could naught but give in to the surge of boundless pleasure that engulfed him and release himself, with a shattering cry, into his beauteous lover’s too-talented mouth.

The young elf was a master blower of more things than mere glass.

With a soft giggle and a giddy smile, Echo rested his flush cheek on the golden elf’s creamy thigh, savoring the tart taste on his tongue.

“Better than a mouthful of soot,” he chuckled, then crawled up over his listless cousin and snuggled against him.

“Damning with faint praise, I see,” Tathren taunted, letting his reverent eyes worship for him. “Shall I be equally severe?”

The resulting blush was no surprise. “Did you…? W-Was it…to your liking?”

“It was maddening, and lovely,” he assured him. “As your very self, lirimaer.” He glanced down to confirm his suspicions, that Echoriath had easily found completion, though untouched. The front of his breeches was dark and wet. “But how did you know…?”

“It is not so dissimilar to blowing a vase or a carafe,” he considered. “Certainly more pleasing than glass fumes.”

“No doubt,” Tathren nearly yawned. He tucked Echoriath closely to him, the last of his energy fading with the light outside.

“I hope I have not spoiled you for the night’s revels,” Echo remarked playfully. “I seem to be quite eager to resume my tutelage.” His concern was pricked when Tathren did not immediately respond. “Meleth? Are you so wearied by one brief…?”

“Nay,” he muttered, then continued on his own train. “Would that you were schooled enough to seize me utterly, throttle me with blighting pleasure and sunder me through to sleep’s sweet oblivion.”

Echoriath was shrewd enough of character not to mistake this for reproach, as some green lovers might, but sign of his cousin’s needfulness of an altogether different sort. He carefully lowered the heavy head onto his shoulder and examined his solemn face. Tathren should still be luminous as Ithil’s panoply of stars from his release; instead, his countenance was wan and grave, his low-lit eyes murky as the brume.

“What kept you from the oak-thicket, meleth?” Echoriath inquired gently. “We expected you readily after breaking fast, yet even after noontime you were absent.”

“Ada-Las’ Naneth has returned from Mandos,” he informed him, without any graceinflinflection of tone.

“Truly?!” Echoriath exclaimed, but did not fail to note his lover’s solemn visage. “Such secrets you keep, nin ind.”

“I imagine you are expected at table soonest,” he answered morosely, avoiding the more obvious response of joy at his grandmother’s return. This, too, did not go unmissed. “I will meet you after nightcaps, in my bedchamber.”

Echoriath was too considerate a listener to bother asking why Tathren would absent himself from the meal. Instead, he focused his efforts on extracting the reason for this too-acute sobriety from the brittle elf in his arms.

He would not let go until he had soothed him some.

*************************************

At the height of balmy midsummer, their garden was an enchanted place. Under the wash of Arien’s boldest rays, the hotbeds of goldenrods, marigolds, snapdragons, and lush greenery was offset by pebbles of obsidian and onyx on the pathways. Inscribed igneous pillars guarded the back gate. After sunset, under the gauzy veil of Ithil’s beams and the star-strewn firmament that courted her, the curlicue grass of the lawn cooled to dew-dappled indigo. The phosphorous moss patches were of iridescent blues and magentas. Traces of mercury made the black stones sparkle, this spectral luminescence lighting the path sufficiently to forgo the use of torches. With the yellow flowers somnambulant, the wisteria, crocuses, and hyacinths came alive, pale and immaculate in the moonlight. The willow boughs that spilled over the gates and the trillium vines that crept down the back of their two-tiered residence both reflected the ethereal lunar cast from their leaves and speckled the garden with enough looming shadow to create an atmosphere of preternatural elegance.

From the ivy-webbed balcony of their bedchamber, Legolas looked out over this haunting nightscape, his somber eyes fixed on the two colossal, engraved sentries that stood aloft of the rear gate. After quitting the newly ponderous company of his Naneth to allow her some vital rest three hours earlier, he had begun his stoic vigil, though inwardly praying to the Lady herself for his son’s return, this night. The first in many an age – indeed, since before the child’s first majority – that the sun had set on a quarrel between them, those last being of incidental significance compared to the cyclone of their latest, injurious war of wills, the wind-spells of which had blasted through every subsequent conversation of the early afternoon and into late, late evening. Tathren’s display could not go unaccounted for, though he had hoped to spare his mother the worst, at least for a short, conciliatory time.

A chill wind of silence had stilled Elrohir’s tongue through Legolas’ prolonged recounting to his snow-white mother - agape throughout – of his latter years in Mirkwood, the hellfire years of Thranduil’s tyrannical reign. Though he had longed to suck back every syllable lapsed from his whispering mouth, he had given her every truth of his heart and owed her nothing less: the manner of his betrothal, the forced circumstance of his first majority (the potential pain of which Elrohir staved off through no fault of the king’s), the troubled years after as he grew to discover the insidious corrosion of his ruler’s fractured alliances with other tribes, his collusion with Celeborn for the good of the people, his secreted binding, Thranduil’s insane objections, the discovery of his necessary deception, and the shameless tactics employed thereafter to beget their son. His disownment. His exile. No foul deed nor debasement had been further concealed, of Thranduil’s or of his own action. Only his brother’s faithful seconding of every charge had spoke in his favor; he had allowed his Naneth every chance to scorn him. For Legolas well knew of the passion that lingered still between Thranduil and his saintly wife, of how her goodly temperance, so violently stolen away, could yet be the remedy that restored his benevolent father to him.

By the end of the tale, Laurelith had been overwhelmed with grief.

It was then that Elrohir had said his piece. If Legolas had been the golden-maned sprite who told of their family’s blackest times, the elf-knight had been the dark angel who counted their uncommon blessings: the tragedy of his own house that spurned both regal fathers to bind their sons in the future’s hope, the respite of Legolas’ majority rites from his bloody honor-quest, his rescue in Corseth, their heady reunion, their blissful binding time, how their baby son’s promise kept their hearts alive through the War, and Legolas’s valor in every action therein. The peaceful years after. Their bucolic life here in Valinor. As he had listened, rapt, to every praiseful word with which his husband heralded him, guilt poured its bilious spew through his rigid veins. The moment when Tathren had ripped himself from Elrohir’s consoling arms played over and over before his glistening eyes, his head resounding with railing echo upon echo of Elrohir’s doubt about the begetting of another child. He had allowed their only son to witness what should have never even been born, their abject terror that Thranduil was the black star that cursed his birth.

It appeared that Legolas himself, however, bore that violet mark on his brow, not their overbold child.

From within the splendorous forest dark, a nightingale sang out, lonesome and sweet. Many a sultry midsummer night had he lingered here, bothered and severe, while awaiting some tipple, some slight tune or distant melody of his adventuring son’s eager heart. Some sign he was hale, homeward-bound. With enough concentration, enough desperation, that familiar note - somber yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring, as once described to him - would murmur through the darkness, would touch the deep of him and tell him Tathren yet lived.

That afternoon, Elrohir had assured his mother of the hope they both had shared for the future with the news of their son’s conception, but his husband had been the beacon of that hope between them and he the rocks that threatened sundering below. Ever had his fears of loosing his most precious one reared the ugliest aspect of his warrior’s soul, the unquestioning ardor with which he instinctively protected his family from any appearance of harm. Perhaps Tathren had reason to desire an audience with his grandsire, perhaps his father had miraculously transformed these last hundred and fifty years, in his children’s absence and his kingdom’s slow decline. Legolas could not keep his thoughts from immediately turning to the dire potential of such a scenario, one he was not sure either he, or more pointedly Elrohir, could survive. If the price was a few nights torment, with only the courtly nightingale for company, so be it. He would sacrifice an army of phantom potentials for the child they already loved; so very dearly, though he himself might doubt the claim.

With a halting sigh, Legolas reeled in wandering eyes, sought out Earendil above.

Slender white arms suddenly wove around him, a sarong-clad form pressed warm to his back. He sensed the vapors of Elrohir’s gentle breath, as they wisped over the back of his neck, down his spine. When he tensed, unintentionally, yet shame-struck, hands smoothed over his chest, meeting and resting over his heart.

“I regret he will not come tonight, my brave one,” Elrohir murmured into his shoulder. “He earlier sought out his cousin’s succor and will rest with him.”

“How do you know this?” Legolas asked, somewhat relieved.

“Elladan sent word,” he softly explained. “They took some supper from the larder, then stole away to Echoriath’s rooms. He assured Elladan that he would be the one to sleep on skins by the fire.”

“Tathren will never allow it,” Legolas mused, though his throat clenched with sadness. “He is too chivalrous to take the bed, while Echoriath tosses below.”

“A son as gallant as his fair father,” Elrohir cooed to him, tightening his hold on his beleaguered mate. “Who would have thought?”

“He has always shown strong signs of your kindly influence,” Legolas remarked stiffly. “Earendil shone bright, the day you first blessed me with your blithe regard.”

“And yours is rot and spindly?” Elrohir retorted, though with sugar enough to sweeten him. He turned his reluctant husband to face him, eyes alight with concern. “Come now, Legolas. You are ever too spare in your self-praise, melethron. For one of such relentless force in battle, your are too easily wounded in affairs of the heart.”

“I shun our child’s succor, blindly force him away, and still you come to comfort me,” Legolas rasped, his face grown sallow as sour cream. “To speak of wounded, Elrohir… you yourself are victim to my all-raising will. T’were not my arms he tore from, yet twas I from whom he fled. With one swipe of my broadsword, I bloodied us both. Forgive me, nin ind…”

“Seek your absolution elsewhere, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir whispered against his cheek. “You have done me no wrong.” The elf-knight sealed this pledge with a chaste, but heartfelt, kiss, the thought of passion between them in this watershed moment too vulgar to contemplate. “Now come along, meleth. This tempest-day has wearied you raw and I would succor *your* trampled heart. A replenishing bath awaits in our bedchamber, some fresh-laundered sheets, the quiescence of my loving arms to berth you…”

“Temptation itself,” Legolas sighed again, burrowing his face in the silken sheathes of hair that graced the length of his darkling husband’s collar. “How did I come to win such a comely mate? So selfless, so true in his regard?”

“The mysteries of our fair Lady are not mine to illuminate,” Elrohir smiled becomingly, then gently pulled him towards the door to their bedchamber. “Come, melethron. A red dawn may break on the morrow, but the night is soft and temperate. Best seek sanctuary, while you may, in the tenderness of your bonded’s embrace. For I have vowed to love you, Legolas, be the sky fair, clouded, or shadow black, and I am an elf of honor.”

“Peerless honor, melethron-nin,” Legolas wholeheartedly agreed, as he allowed himself to be drawn inside.

End of Part Five



Author’s Note: I want to thank all the readers who have taken the time to read and review, especially those who do so on a regular basis. I promise more detailed responses next time around! Your comments are incredibly appreciated